Shadow of the giant

Old.
Confinement wasn't good for him. He was not suffering physically, but he seemed
to be growing wan as a plant kept in a closet without sun.
    "Promise me something," said Volescu.
    "What?" asked Bean.
    "Something. Anything. Bargain with me."
    "The one thing you want," said Bean, "you
will never have again."
    "Only because you're vindictive," said Volescu.
"Ungrateful—you exist because I made you, and you keep me in this
box."
    "It's a good-sized room. It's air-conditioned. Compared
to the way you treated my brothers...."
    "They were not legally—"
    "And now you have my babies hidden away. And a virus
with the potential to destroy the human race—"
    "Improve it—"
    "Erase it. How can you be given your freedom again? You
combine grandiosity with amorality."
    "Rather like Peter Wiggin, whom you serve so
faithfully. His little toad."
    "The word is 'toady,' " said Bean.
    "Yet here you are, visiting me. Could it be that Julian
Delphiki, my dear half-nephew, has a problem I could help him with?"
    "Same questions as before," said Bean.
    "Same answer," said Volescu. "I have no idea
what happened to your missing embryos."
    Bean sighed. "I thought you might want a chance to
square things with me and Petra before you leave this Earth."
    "Oh, come on," said Volescu. "You're
threatening me with the death penalty?"
    "No," said Bean. "You're simply ... leaving
Earth. Peter is turning you over to the I.F. On the theory that your virus is
an alien invasion."
    "Only if you're an alien invasion," said Volescu.
    "But I am," said Bean. "I'm the first of a race
of short-lived giant geniuses. Think how much larger a population the Earth can
sustain when the average age at death is eighteen."
    "You know, Bean, there's no reason for you to die
young."
    "Really? You have the antidote?"
    "Nobody needs an antidote to destiny. Death from
giantism comes from the strain on your heart, trying to pump so much blood
through so many kilometers of arteries and veins. If you get away from gravity,
your heart won't be overtaxed and you won't die."
    "You think I haven't thought of that?" said Bean.
"I'll still continue to grow."
    "So you get large. The I.F. can build you a really big
ship. A colony ship. You can gradually fill it up with your protoplasm and
bones. You'd live for years, tied to the walls of the ship like a balloon. An
enormous Gulliver. Your wife could come visit you. And if you get too big,
well, there's always amputation. You could become a being of pure mind. Fed
intravenously, what need would you have of belly and bowels? Eventually, all
you really need is your brain and spine, and they need never die. A mind
eternally growing."
    Bean stood up. "Is that what you created me for,
Volescu? To be a limbless crippled monster out in space?"
    "Silly boy," said Volescu, "to ordinary
humans you already are a monster. Their worst nightmare. The species that will
replace them. But to me, you're beautiful. Even tethered to an artificial
habitat, even limbless, trunkless, voiceless, you'd be the most beautiful
creature alive."
    "And yet you came within one toilet-tank lid of killing
me and burning my body."
    "I didn't want to go to jail."
    "Yet here you are," said Bean. "And your next
prison is out in space."
    "I can live like Prospero, refining my arts in
solitude."
    "Prospero had Ariel and Caliban," said Bean.
    "Don't you understand?" said Volescu. "You're
my Caliban. And all your little children—they're my Ariels. I've spread them
over the earth. You'll never find them. Their mothers have been taught well.
They'll mate, they'll reproduce before their giantism becomes obvious. Whether
my virus works or not, your children are my virus."
    "So that's what Achilles plotted?"
    "Achilles?" Volescu laughed. "That
bloody-handed little moron? I told him your babies were dead. That's all he
wanted. Fool."
    "So they're not dead."
    "All alive. All implanted. By now, perhaps, some of
them born, since those with your abilities will be born two months
premature."
    "You knew that and didn't tell us?"
    "Why should I? The delivery was safe, wasn't it? The
baby was mature enough to breathe and function on its own?"
    "What else do you know?"
    "I know that everything will work out. Julian, look at
yourself, man! You escaped at the age of one. Which means that seventeen months
after conception, you were able to survive without parents. I don't have even
the tiniest worry about the health of your babies, and neither should you. They
don't need you, because you